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To: shroudie
Shroudie, if they can type the blood, why can't they carbon date it?
16 posted on 04/13/2004 10:53:44 PM PDT by Graymatter
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To: Graymatter
They could and they will not. Keep in mind that to carbon 14 date something you need to burn it until all that is left is carbon (carbon 12, 14 and 13 isotopes). Although a small amount is all that is needed, the amount would be significant in term of the destruction of the cloth. Scraping alone would probably not produce enough blood and so some would need to be dissolved out. Add to the fact that many people would be insulted by the idea of burning the blood of Christ for a scientific test.

Shroudie
18 posted on 04/14/2004 4:18:53 AM PDT by shroudie
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To: Graymatter
Shroudie, if they can type the blood, why can't they carbon date it?

It hasn't even been firmly determined that there *is* any blood on the shroud. Some tests appear to rule out the existence of actual blood, some (mostly by Heller and Adler) appear to indicate that there is blood -- but other researchers have had trouble reproducing Heller and Adler's tests even using the same methdologies.

PCR testing has amplified human DNA from the shroud (and the DNA seems to indicate an AB blood type), but there's no way to determine that the DNA traces were actually from any alleged blood on the shroud, since so many people have handled the shroud through the centuries that the source of the DNA could well have been anyone's fingerprints, hair, skin flakes, etc. which happen to have been on the surface of the shroud.

As with so many other studies of the shroud, the results are more muddled and much less conclusive than its proponents would like to admit.

23 posted on 04/14/2004 6:29:01 AM PDT by Ichneumon
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